On my last first day of high school my first thought will be, great, I only have 179 days of high school left! And then on my last first day of high school my second thought will be, oh no, I only have 179 days of high school left.

Senior year blindsides everyone. We knew it was coming, but it was a blurry reality that always seemed miles away. Now, on the cusp of my senior year, it feels like a mistake has been made. What happened to the last three years? Yesterday I was a terrified freshman being told, “Don’t worry, you have time,” and now the hourglass has run out and the time is up.

Growing up, our expectations of high school stemmed from the highly dramatized depictions on television. The popular girls would be mean, the jocks would be dumb, and everyone would spontaneously break out into song in the classrooms. Reality isn’t quite so exciting. The real “popular” girls drift from clique to clique because they are friends with everyone. The jocks have to keep their grades up to play sports and the students are more likely to be sleeping on their desks than singing any songs.

For many teenagers, becoming a senior is the ultimate goal. They’re envied, feared, and remain unquestioned at the top of the food chain. However, as seniors, we’re still wondering what happened to nap time and why people don’t watch cartoons anymore. How are we so close to being in college, when just yesterday we were learning to tie our shoes?

Although now is a time for difficult decisions, senior year is a balance of the trivial and the serious. We have to make choices that could determine the direction of our future, while also trying to pick the perfect prom dress. We’re worried about getting into college and worried that everyone secretly hates our new haircut. We’re impatient to be adults but don’t know how to stop being teenagers.

As seniors in high school, we’ve earned the right to walk through the hallways with confidence. We’re the most experienced and, hopefully, the most mature. We look at the freshmen wistfully, remembering when detention was a death sentence and being late to class felt like the end of the world. Three years later, we have bigger fish to fry. Scholarship, financial aid, and college applications will take over our lives for the next 10 months. We will live off of the advice from those who have done this before and take comfort knowing they were just as scared. We’re getting our first taste of the future and it is bittersweet.

So here we sit, on the verge of potential success. But more importantly, we are on the verge of the unknown. Our future is a mystery and, as the saying goes, the only thing we can count on is change - we welcome it!